"There they are right there! Nice shot. Now wait until he turns on it. Now! Ouch!"

Jeff Pierce shows off one of the peacock bass the pair of traveling anglers managed to boat in Miami. Photo by Rob Doherty.

Those are the sounds of sight-fishing for peacock bass, with the final one the result of my excited partner's fly rod smacking me upside the head.

Jeff Pierce is an artist with a fly rod, but a too-quick hookset proved to be a concern! It took several more minutes, but in the end, Pierce got the timing down. His fly rod bent and the reel's drag sang as the male peacock alternately broke the surface and made mad dashes for deeper water. Finally, Jeff netted and boated the fish, while I was thinking to myself that I had to get a fly rod for the next trip. But this took place on the last day of our fishing trip, so I am getting ahead of myself.

Miami is not a place you usually find two good old boys from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, floating in their BassCat boat. It was the chance to catch these exotic peacock bass that prompted us to pull the boat all the way down here.

The canals in Broward and Miami-Dade counties hold butterfly peacock bass. The canals were stocked with 25,000 of the fish in 1984 as an experiment to control spotted tilapia, oscars, red Midas and other exotic cichlids that had become established in these waters. The experiment worked, providing the side benefit of a very good fishery for the peacocks.

The butterfly peacock bass is the smallest of the three types of cichlids in its family, all of which are actually pavons and native to South America.

Butterfly peacock bass will spawn several times in a year through the warmer months of May through August. The current Florida record for the butterfly peacock bass was caught in Kendall Lakes, in Dade County and stands at 9 and 8 hundredths pounds. The fish was caught by Jerry Gomez and has held the record slot since March 11, 1993.

In the past, I had fished here, but this was the first expedition bringing a boat to fish on my own. The first day, we launched at Antonio Maceo Park on 7th Street in Miami. The park is on the edge of Blue Lagoon, the lake just south of the Miami International Airport. Unfortunately, right off the bat the wind was killing us. A 20-mile-per-hour blow had the water stirred up, and made the sight-fishing we came for out of the question.

Firing up the outboard, we made a long run to the Snapper Creek Canal (C-2) that runs through the Sweetwater and Kendall areas. We located fish there, but with the wind, we were unable to see the strike to make the proper hookset. Again, we zeroed. That pretty much ended our first day's pursuit.

On Wednesday with the GPS in the truck set on a fresh address to head to, we went directly to the Snapper Creek boat launch near the intersection of Snapper Creek Drive North and Southwest 99th Street.

We went to a side canal and Jeff quickly caught the first peacock of our trip. It was only a 6-inch female, but it was a peacock bass and we had scored.